"Because
you wanted
to go on this stupid thing. I
told you it was a bad idea."

"Wha...
you..." Naota struggled for words, face growing increasingly red
with his frustration. Ninamori simply sighed, placing her hand under
her chin and glancing out the window bitterly, bored.

"This
isn't exactly how I wanted to spend the day, either, you know,"
Naota finally managed, mustering up a glare-

Which
was quashed fairly quickly beneath the single baleful glimpse of
Ninamori's eye. He steeled himself, knowing that a tongue lashing
that could strip paint of battleships would occur...

Except
it didn't. Ninamori was looking away again, hiding her face with
her long hair that shined like quicksilver in the noon sun. After a
few heartbeats, she murmured softly, "If you wanted to stay back at
school, you should have said so."

Naota
froze up. Damn. Annoyed Ninamori he could deal with. Quiet Ninamori
was something else altogether, a creature that was far more
terrifying because he wasn't sure what to do with it.

"I
didn't," he began, eyes planted firmly at the now patterns on his
jeans, gripping them tightly with white knuckles. "I didn't want
to stay there."

Ninamori
said nothing. Naota hoped this was a good sign. Swallowing, he added,
"Thanks. For taking me out of school."

Still
nothing. Naota was about to backtrack when Ninamori finally turned
her head, giving him an arching eyebrow. "Well, if I didn't,
you'd skip on your own. And that would leave me with Gaku and
Masashi all day."

"They're
not that bad," Naota said absently, but he didn't mean it. They
were that bad, maybe a little worse. But if they weren't, he
probably wouldn't put up with them.

Ninamori
didn't reply, and his thoughts started drifting down toward the
people below them, wondering if they were ever going to fix this, or
if they were going to be stuck here forever.

Oddly,
the thought didn't seem so bad. After all, this was Ninamori, the
only other person in Mabase who actually thought along the same lines
as him, who didn't take his half-considered replies and
noncommittal answers. If there was someone he was going to be stuck
with forever in this tiny little compartment, it might as well be
Ninamori.

"You'd
better not be thinking anything perverted."

Naota
blinked, once, twice, startled out of his reverie as Ninamori leveled
a no-nonsense stare at him. He was about to protest when he saw the
twinkling amusement in her eyes, and he wondered absently if her
contacts were doing that.

"No
way," he muttered, glancing out the window.

"Are
you saying I'm not pretty?"

Oh
shit.

On
second thought, staying in this compartment with Ninamori might be
the worst thing ever. Glancing down at the distant ground, Naota
sighed, and prayed that the amusement park employees would fix the
ferris wheel soon.

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